


Swim

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [14]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Post TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo isn't working hard enough, and Hux knows why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swim

Kylo wasn’t recovering as well as he should be. Hux knew this, knew it far too well. Kylo Ren should be back to fighting fit much faster than a ‘regular’ Human would, and Hux had the statistical data to back up his estimates.

A ‘normal’ person, one of his many Stormtroopers, would be at seventy-five percent of their baseline by now, with the medical care and respite and physiotherapy that Kylo had enjoyed. Their oxygen saturation would be almost perfect, and they’d be able to do all of the prerequisite training routines, if at a somewhat reduced power and duration.

Hux had read the medical reports. They were probably supposed to be medical in confidence, and he wasn’t actually Ren’s superior, but no one on the crew would ever dare to ignore his command. Ever. 

Which meant something was getting in the way of his recuperation, and Hux... Hux wished he didn’t already know the answer to that question: Kylo wasn’t healing because Kylo didn’t _want_ to. The man took a bowcaster and five saber-wounds to floor him, and even then he was a growling, angry, still-breathing mess when Hux found him. He could be back to his normal self, if he just wanted to be. If he put as much effort into it as he did being a recalcitrant dick... but that was Kylo all over, wasn’t it?

Hux didn’t understand the Force the same way that Kylo did, of course not. But he knew from research (no one took a Knight of Ren onboard without researching the risks, issues, and control points) just how powerful Ren was. He could do things most Force-sensitives couldn’t – or not as easily as he could – and he wasn’t even through with his training.

If he wanted to, Hux thought, Ren - **Kylo** \- could probably take down the Supreme Leader and assume direct control over the First Order himself. It likely said much about Kylo’s personal ambitions and priorities that he was content, instead, to remain the Master of the Knights of Ren.

Hux thought he was an idiot. But then, Hux thought nearly everyone was an idiot. 

Maybe it was the bureaucracy involved. Maybe Ren was biding his time. More likely, he didn’t have the—

Anyway. Here he was, in the training suite set aside for Kylo’s Knights of Ren. Kylo normally trained here, to be away from everyone else. Hux had initially accused him of just slacking off down here, but the angry flare in response had told him he’d hit a nerve, and he’d backed off. Hux had access to everywhere, but he didn’t often use the privilege of it. He didn’t _need_ to, not usually.

Right now, though... right now, he did. 

Hux knew Kylo would hear him when he entered the suite, and he walked straight to the changing area, ignoring him. He had a small duffel bag over one shoulder, and he placed it on the bench to change. Off came the gloves, the shirt, the formal pants and the boots. One by one, he stripped his signs and insignia, down to the basest elements of his uniform. He put his socks inside his boots, and pulled on the light sweatpants, training socks, and sneakers. 

By the time he was done, Kylo had stopped his routine to stare at the door, and Hux felt a little proud at the surprise on his lover’s face.

“Do you really doubt me so much?”

“I don’t doubt you at all, Kylo,” he replied. 

“Then why are you here, if not to check up on me?”

“To help.”

Kylo’s eyes narrowed (and under that scar, his face looked so much older. So much more pained, and not in the physical sense. He’d thought Kylo was an old soul before, now he looked – at times – practically _Imperial_ ). “I don’t need your help, General.”

“Perhaps not, but I’m going to give you it, anyway.”

Hux was under no illusion that he was in any way capable of keeping pace with Kylo, but it wouldn’t stop him trying. Although there’d been jokes about his frame, he knew how to use what he had. He’d never have the brute strength of Kylo, so he’d never clash physically. He was slight, but he was quick. Dextrous, where others were blessed with gravity and muscle-mass. He had reach, and flexibility. 

Where Kylo could use the Force and his lightsaber, the General relied instead on his wits. And he didn’t feel outmatched, or outgunned, even in the bedroom. Kylo might be a force of nature (no pun intended), but he had the control needed to ride the storm out to the other side. It was, in all respects, a mutually satisfying arrangement.

Right now, Kylo was moving over to the treadmill to run. Hux followed him, putting his water bottle in the holder. Kylo didn’t use one, because Kylo was an idiot, but it would be him with the dehydration headache later, and that would still fail to teach him.

The Knight of Ren turned his machine on to a punishing pace, and Hux set his at one that would burn, but that he could maintain for the duration. He didn’t feel the need to crank it to a ridiculous level, knowing that Kylo would feel inadequate or observed enough to push himself, too. He didn’t have to say ‘put your back into it’, because Kylo’s inner voice said it to him enough. They ran in companionable silence for a while, and he heard when Kylo’s breathing started to get ragged.

It took a lot for Kylo to get to that point. It did in bed, too. Hux had found that a pleasing challenge, finding ways to make Kylo break a sweat. Making him work for it, making him see that he didn’t have to finish in thirty seconds flat with a scream. Kylo had tempered slowly in his hand from a bolting, bucking stallion into a slow, sensuous lover. Now their fucking went on for as long as they needed it, and Hux was usually a quivering wreck by the time Kylo was done with him. Or Kylo was, if Hux decided it would be the other way around.

He glanced to the side and saw the sheen of sweat across Kylo’s forehead, making his curls spring tighter, making his cheeks flush pink. He smiled to himself and took a long swig of water, allowing it to squeak the bottle on the way out, to make his Knight turn to see his upturned head. 

“Why are you really here?” Kylo asked, his legs thudthudthudthudding under him, pacing out the steps, taking the invisible distance a hurl at a time.

“I told you: to help you.”

Thudthudthudthudthud.

“Is this because I haven’t been...”

Kylo trailed, not elaborating on it. He didn’t need to, they both knew.

“Is it so difficult to imagine I might be doing this for _you_?”

Yes, was the answer the soldier didn’t say, head snapping forwards as he pushed the button to make it faster, harder. To make it **hurt**.

They hadn’t touched one another since Starkiller. Not really. Hux had brought Kylo back, and Kylo had curled against his chest with an uncharacteristic silence, a hand in his shirt and face curled into pain. He’d been so careful with him, and he’d made sure the medics treated him well...

...and then Kylo had all but ignored him, since. 

It hurt, of course it hurt. Hux had tried to make small overtures, not even to entice him back to bed, but because he... because he worried about the damn fool. Ren had gone from a careful (if sometimes volatile) lover to a man who barely looked him in the eye. Things had been awkward since the Hosnian system, of course they had, but then... then he’d...

“I will train harder.” 

Kylo’s voice was devoid of all emotion in that way that Hux knew meant he felt so many other things. So many things, that feeling itself was too much, and the man had switched it off to cope.

He knew, because he did it, too.

“This is not about your training for the Supreme Leader.” Hux kept running, though it was tough to keep his voice as even as he wanted when he did. “Nor is it about anything personal – physical – between us.”

“Then...?”

Hux stopped his machine, and let his legs slow to nothing. Stopped it, and wiped the back of his hand across his head.

“Let me help you,” he repeated, willing the man to understand.

“I don’t know if you can.”

“You’ll never know, if you don’t try.”

Kylo switched his machine off, too, then. Hands on the rails, his chest heaving with the exertion. 

Hux went over, and looked up at him. Waited. Waited for him to look down.

“I don’t know if you can.”

Neither did Hux. “If I can’t, then who?”

It wasn’t a good answer, but it was the only one he had. They were in this together, now. No matter what. They were both in far too deep, and the only options were sink or swim.

Hux would rather not swim alone.


End file.
